Forum:Floating article icons
Archive I've been meaning to bring this up for ages. One thing I think Wiki 24 needs is a distinction between IU and OOU articles. Memory Alpha uses a "real world perspective" icon which appears in the corner of all OOU articles on the site. The Wookieepedia goes a couple steps further and has icons not only for OOU articles, but also for each era of time, as well as featured articles. I think this would be a great idea for Wiki 24 and, despite the tedious endeavor, would definitely spice things up around here. I tried to figure out how to do this a long time ago, but didn't succeed. I even got a negative reaction from an editor on another site when asked how to go about it. If anyone's up for the task of learning how to do this or finding someone else who can, I think we could add a whole new level of aesthetic and usefulness to Wiki 24. I figure we can parallel the Wookieepedia example and have the following icons: * Day 1 * Day 2 * Day 3 * Day 4 * Day 5 * Day 6 * Novels * Comics * Games * Real world perspective * Featured articles Or perhaps icons for each specific day, rather than grouping all novels, comics and games together? I doubt we'd need any others, but I might be missing some. We wouldn't need icons for EVERYTHING, since things like prequels can be grouped with their respective seasons, of course. The criteria for use would have to be agreed upon before hand, but essentially the non-FA/RW icons would replace the "Seasons"/"Appeared in" field in the sidebar for most IU articles. Ages ago, I uploaded the images for each of the Days (Day1.png, etc.), but never got any further with the project. Feedback? --Proudhug 20:00, 17 June 2008 (UTC) : What would we do about characters? E.G. if it looked like the one on the Star Trek wiki, there wouldn't be space for all the above categories (minus real world) on someone like Jack Bauer. Why not just have ones distinguishing Real world from OOU, so that it would be easy to identify between 2 different types. SignorSimon 20:21, 17 June 2008 (UTC) As I said, we'd parallel the Wookieepedia. Check out the Force on Wookieepedia, for an example of seven icons in a row. --Proudhug 20:42, 17 June 2008 (UTC) : Yup, I thought about bringing this up too, especially in the cases of Actor, Crew, and the Deleted Scenes Character articles. I have high hopes about this. From the start I'd like to strongly recommend that the icons we use be more prominent than Wookiepedia's, which are outright miniscule. I never noticed them until now. The OOU icon used by MemoryAlpha is excellent and much more detailed. : Two questions come to mind: what icons would Ep Guides get according to this system... just the OOU and the single appropriate Day icons? And also, would we really have to remove of the "Seasons"/"Appeared in" fields in sidebars? – Blue Rook 00:44, 18 June 2008 (UTC)talk Well, as Simon pointed out, "Jack Bauer" himself will have a slew of icons across his page, so it might not be a good idea to make them too big. I think that it'd be wise to make them small, but brighter so they're more noticeable. Wookieepedia's are monochromatic on a monochromatic background, which is probably why you didn't notice. The yellow on black of the current .pngs that I uploaded will likely be more obvious. To answer your questions, yes, the ep guides would get the RW icon and the DayX icon, and possibly the FA icon. And I guess we wouldn't have to remove those template fields, but it would be kind of redundant. I'm fine with leaving them in, though. --Proudhug 01:42, 18 June 2008 (UTC) : If we are suggesting having them bigger than on the Wookiepedia, then I think we might have problems with Jack, who would have practically every one on his page. I'm not sure of a solution to this, unless they stay small, which personally I would not like as much. SignorSimon 06:26, 18 June 2008 (UTC) Gentlemen, is micro-tiny. If we're going to go run around tagging everything with these, let's make it an effort that will be noticed! I'd say 1.5x larger at least. Even at that size, Jack's article will be perfectly fine. – Blue Rook 13:29, 18 June 2008 (UTC)talk :: How is this micro-tiny? It's about 1.5 times the size of the mark-up buttons in the edit window. The icons will serve pretty much the exact same purpose. Clicking on the "1" will bring you to the "Day 1" page, clicking on the "FA" (or whatever) will bring you to the "Featured articles" page, etc. It's a quick reference to see which things this article is associated with, and provide an easy link to it. Like I said, we can still keep the "Seasons"/"Appeared in" fields in the sidebar, and the numbers in that are even smaller than these icons. I don't get how you guys think these are too small. :: Anyway, this is all a moot point until we figure out how to do this. Afterwards, we can agree upon a size. I think that the yellow-on-black will automatically make it more visible than Wookieepedia's. --Proudhug 14:55, 18 June 2008 (UTC) ::: Has anyone gotten a chance to look into this yet? --Proudhug 01:06, 23 June 2008 (UTC) :: I looked at the templates on Wookiepedia and MAlpha: I couldn't figure out how they got the buttons to float up there. They must have done something complicated that isn't particularly obvious. If you want it done that way, I suppose someone could just ask one of their admins? :: The alternative would be to just have these proposed buttons in a designated, isolated space at the traditional top of the article. But then they're not float-y.– Blue Rook 03:59, 23 June 2008 (UTC)talk I think it would look more professional and less clumsy if we could get them floating at the top. Proudhug, I'm much more up for you idea of them being yellow on black making them more obvious, I think that wil greatly improve them. SignorSimon 06:40, 23 June 2008 (UTC) : Is this coming along? --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 21:58, 30 August 2008 (UTC) :: After my initial look into it, I came to conclusion that it was over my head. Unless Proudhug has made progress, I'm pretty sure this idea has just been on the back burner for awhile. I still think we should do it eventually though. – Blue Rook 21:30, 1 September 2008 (UTC)talk UPDATE: I just made a bit of progress on this. See the Wiki 24:Sandbox for the update, and look at the top right using the Monaco default (I have no idea what this looks like in monobook). I found a way to make one of those DayX.png's float to the top, like we talked about. However, I currently can't make it work with more than 1 of them. And we must not even think about undertaking this project unless we can get a bunch of them to work at the same time. – Blue Rook 23:15, 8 September 2008 (UTC)talk :: Amazing work, Blue Rook!!! It works fine in both Monaco and Monobook. I added a second icon and it works perfectly. Congratulations. How did you figure it out? Now we just need to decide which other icons to use and what the criteria for each one is. Oh, and the images should link to link to the Day article, rather than the image. --Proudhug 23:30, 8 September 2008 (UTC) :: I added a border to the icons to hopefully make them stand out more. --Proudhug 23:54, 8 September 2008 (UTC) Very glad you added that border! As you remember I earlier thought they were a little hard to see in their original form, but now it's better in my opinion. You can make those images redirect to the Day article by a trick outlined by Wikia Helper Nathan over in Forum:Sweet image trick! The irony is, when he introduced that trick, I and Simon kinda started barking because he and I always tinker with images and this trick forces editors to jump through a hoop to get to the file page. But it's a good idea in this case, for sure. Alternately, how do you feel about if the image redirected to the Day X category? (Just putting that out there, I definitely don't feel strongly about it either way.) And I just found it by stumbling onto some guy's page on Wikipedia who had stuff at the extreme bottom. I changed the div code to "top" and sure enough, in our sandbox it went up and covered the Monaco tabs for "Project page" and "Discussion", so I tinkered with the numbers to make the images descend a tiny bit, and not cover up those tabs. The value I decided on was "6.5em". I'm assuming we'll be inserting these via 1 single template, correct? I don't look forward to making that monster... – Blue Rook 00:44, 9 September 2008 (UTC)talk Here's my two cents; they look amazing Blue Rook, but aren't the images a little stretched? They look bigger than the originals Proudhug upload in my opinion. Also, when you say "one template", you mean one template for each image, right? Also, they look a lot better with the yellow border, and I think that should be a precident; they should all have that border around them. The other pages I think should be included is OOU articles, novels, comics, DVDs etc. that sort of thing. --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 06:33, 9 September 2008 (UTC) : The icons currently in the sandbox are indeed a little bigger, I made a custom px value assignment. : By one template I meant, just a single one for all them. Think of the appearances template: it's 1 template that has the ability to link to all the episodes of that season. Well, what I'm proposing with Mandy as an example would be something like: . This example would give Mandy only the appropriate 1, 2, and 4 icons. Mia Kirschner's actor page would then get , to give it our "written from the real-world perspective" icon. : Wouldn't that be easier than "one template for each image"? – Blue Rook 06:53, 9 September 2008 (UTC)talk Yep, your idea > my idea. Do you have any idea how to go about this? --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 16:59, 9 September 2008 (UTC) : Woo check the sandbox! I wish I could say something that made me sound smarter, but I just ripped off the Appearances Templates and replaced the episode links with those little images... and it works. Also I redirected the images over to their appropriate Season Articles using that trick. : All that's left to do now is decide what other icons we want, and then folks who are good with images (*ahemSimon,cough,cough!*) could make a few selections of images for them. – Blue Rook 22:08, 9 September 2008 (UTC)talk Do you want me to hash up some other images? Or are you doing it, Proudhug? --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 22:08, 9 September 2008 (UTC) : It depends on what we want the images to look like. Should they all just be letters/numbers? --Proudhug 22:42, 9 September 2008 (UTC) Besides the Season and FA icons, I'm thinking we should have a "Spin-offs" icon to encompass everything else, and perhaps a "The Game" icon since the PS game is such a noteworthy exception. At the start of the thread, Proudhug differentiated between Novels/Comics/Games, but I just don't feel those are useful. It would just be clutter. I believe strongly that the OOU/real world icon should be larger than the others (perhaps just short of 2x) since it's going to be alone pretty much all the time. The size and shape of the large, rectangular MA OOU icon is an amazing example. I've always loved MA's real-world icon, even though theirs is too high up imo. – Blue Rook 05:57, 10 September 2008 (UTC)talk : I think this is something we need to start up again. Tell me what images you are wanting and I'd be happy to make them. Also, are we doing the OOU one 2X the length? I think thats a good idea, as you said Rook, to distinguish it from the others. --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 17:44, 18 December 2008 (UTC) :: Haha yes I agree. This has transformed into our most elusive goal as a group. So besides the Day numerals, I think there should be a "The Game" icon; an "Out-of-universe" icon for Seasons, episode guides, actors, and crew; a "Spin-offs" for magazines, comics, games, and anything else that isn't the TV show or Playstation Game, and also a "Featured Article". Could you swing some experimental examples of those Simon? That would really get this going again I think, so thanks so much for bringing this to the fore. Regarding the size, I imagine the OOU one will have to be the largest (but not necessarily 2x, if it's legible at another size). The other three I mentioned above might logically have to be an intermediate size. 00:07, 19 December 2008 (UTC) Right then! I wasn't sure whether plain text or images were the way to go, so for each I've made an example of both. As always, they can easily be changed so don't worry about pointing out flaws or just general things you think could be better. Here are the ones from The Game: Whattyathink? My favs are highlighted in bold. --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 09:44, 19 December 2008 (UTC) : Thanks for whipping these up, Simon! I personally like the consistency of the imageless icons, but I might be convinced otherwise. I also prefer the term "Expanded Universe" over "Spin-Off." --Proudhug 15:58, 19 December 2008 (UTC) :: I understand what you are saying about the consisitency (something I often lean towards), so what I am thinking is that maybe we could add some images to the Season ones? Maybe a small promo of Jack next to the number? I only suggest this because I prefer the image ones I have here opposed to the plain text ones. Also, if we decide to go with the plain text ones it won't be a problem in changing it to "Expanded Universe". --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 21:10, 19 December 2008 (UTC) : From the looks of it, EU and The Game might have to be an intermediate size, or equally as large as the OOU. I enjoy the image ones as well, but the words are necessary given the size of the images, so maybe the image+word combos are the best option. Without the words, the Game image of Jack might not be obvious to many that it's simply a shrunken down CGI version of Jack. 07:34, 21 December 2008 (UTC) Images and words might be tricky to fit on. I'll give it a shot, but I'm not sure "The Game" would be able to get anything else on that little image. --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 11:00, 21 December 2008 (UTC) : No I figured as much, that's why I said "EU and The Game might have to be an intermediate size, or equally as large as the OOU", earlier I mentioned how OOU might not be the only large one. In the finished product, maybe only the Days will be the small-sized ones. 17:23, 21 December 2008 (UTC) :: I don't agree that The Game should get its own icon, since it technically is part of the EU, but even if we do give it one, why would we have to include the full title, rather than simply a "G"? Also, why would "EU" need to be double-sized? FA is also two letters and it looks great. --Proudhug 23:41, 21 December 2008 (UTC) : That sounds better, the Game being part of EU. My interest in seeing The Game having its own icon was because I considered it a "notable exception", but such a judgment is rather arbitrary and I now prefer your idea of having all the EU under 1 icon. 00:43, 22 December 2008 (UTC) Whoa, I totally missed this conclusion of this discussion! Sorry! Is there anything else I need to do apart from the image I've got here? --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 10:31, 17 January 2009 (UTC) I really like all that has happened, and if I can help in any way, please let me know. I would agree that the text with the faded background looks really nice and also shows consistency. I think it also allows for them to be markers while not making them dominant on the page. The colored background with on the black background of the site might make them too prominent, so I'd vote for the faded black background. --BauerJ24 02:22, 20 January 2009 (UTC) :BUMP! bump... bump... --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 17:30, 24 January 2009 (UTC) :: Okay, so let's recap. What are our final conclusions here? Which icons are we going with and what do they look like? --Proudhug 17:51, 24 January 2009 (UTC) I think, it's like this. We use the EU.png one I posted above. We use the Days 1-6 which you made (and if you could render up a "7" that would be great). We used FA.png, and OOU1.png, to follow the imageless designs. Agreed? --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 21:37, 24 January 2009 (UTC) : I know it seems like I'm nagging but I really think we should get this implemented. --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 18:44, 24 February 2009 (UTC) :: I went ahead and, borrowing from Memory-Alpha and Wookieepedia as necessary, implemented an Icon and Icons template to create a row of icons at the top of each page. Check out the Jack Bauer page to get an idea. Like? Dislike? --Pyramidhead 04:23, 25 February 2009 (UTC) Wow, I can't believe it's been over eight months (plus probably at least a year in my head before that) and we've finally got icons! Thanks for doing that Pyramidhead. Now comes the enormous task of implementing it into four thousand articles! Does anyone know how to use bots? --Proudhug 05:44, 25 February 2009 (UTC) : I thought we decided not to use the one for The Game? --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 07:40, 25 February 2009 (UTC) :: I take back my December 22 post, about the Game being integrated into EU. Now that I see it separate, it's really cool. I say we keep it separate, but really, it's not a big issue if someone feels extremely strongly in the other direction. 18:05, 26 February 2009 (UTC) : I see no reason to do so, and you haven't provided any. "It's really cool" is hardly a policy-inducing argument. :p --Proudhug 20:08, 26 February 2009 (UTC) :: What are we doing for cast/crew articles? I think maybe they should get their own icon. As well as special features. Also, what about merchandise? I think those would be 3 good new icons to include. --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 23:48, 26 February 2009 (UTC) ::: Cast and crew don't need a separate one, they already have OOU, right? And also of course whatever season they were involved with. Novel writers and outside book editors will probably also get EU. 23:58, 26 February 2009 (UTC) :: OK, what about merchandise? --SignorSimon (talk/ / ) 00:00, 27 February 2009 (UTC) ::: A stick figure with the word "fan" on him, throwing dollar signs at another stick figure with the word "FOX" on him? Lol! I guess we could just leave them alone. No real need to put icons on absolutely everything in the main namespace, right? 01:56, 27 February 2009 (UTC) Yikes. The whole purpose of the icons was really to distinguish between IU articles and OOU articles. Including IU icons for each Day (and combining all non-TV stuff into one), plus one for FAs, is just to make it a little more useful. I'm very opposed to adding any more. To answer your question about merchandise, Simon, those are OOU articles, so they get that specific icon. I guess things like Season guides or Findings at CTU can get relevant Day icons, too. But really, the whole idea is to make sure that users can immediately determine which articles aren't written in the IU perspective. --Proudhug 04:03, 27 February 2009 (UTC) : Proudhug although you didn't say it specifically, it sounds to me like you're opposed to having season numbers in actor articles, and the only thing belonging there is the OOU one. Is this a correct inference on my part? 05:48, 27 February 2009 (UTC) No, I'm fine with OOU pages including the pre-existing Day icons. I just don't want too many icons muddying the whole point of the project. This isn't a substitute for the Category list. --Proudhug 09:51, 27 February 2009 (UTC) Argghhg!! Shit, why do we have two templates? Icon and Icon''s''? Which one are we supposed to use? 01:58, 27 February 2009 (UTC) :It wouldn't be that hard if you looked at the documentation. Template:Icons --Pyramidhead 05:08, 27 February 2009 (UTC) :: Oh how convenient! you corrected the inconsistency in the documentation and then made it sound like I was just too stupid to read the documentation, LOL! 05:36, 27 February 2009 (UTC) :::It wasn't unclear before that either. --Pyramidhead 00:47, 4 March 2009 (UTC) Disappearing icons I hope I'm the only person experiencing some disappearing icons? It may just be the old laptop I'm using, but for example I'm not seeing Noah Daniels' icons. 12:52, 9 April 2009 (UTC) New header Tempted to just throw it up there but thought I'd get y'all's feedback. I've fixed the icons to fit into the margin between the page header and the article content and expand when moused over. Thoughts? http://imgur.com/a/qaiL6 (expanded version on left) --Pyramidhead (talk) 22:20, June 15, 2017 (UTC) :Do you have a demo of how it works interactively?--Acer4666 (Talk) 21:28, June 19, 2017 (UTC) :::Copy the following to your personal etc etc --Pyramidhead (talk) 08:52, June 20, 2017 (UTC) .topicon-container { top: -18px; display: none; z-index: 100; } .topicon-container:hover { background: #000; padding: 10px; border: 2px solid #777; } .topicon-container img { width: auto; height: 18px } .topicon-container:hover img { height: 26px } $(document).on('ready', function() { $('#WikiaMainContent').prepend( $('.topicon-container') ); }); ::::I can't get what I put into User:Acer4666/wikia.js to load, I'm not sure why? So I can't check how that works. ::::However, even from the pics it looks like the icons still overlap the line, and having mouseover expanding icons seems like a bad idea to me. The star wars wiki (example here) puts their icons above the edit button and they seem to fit nicely there. I've submitted some js to the site (awaiting review) to see if we can do the same thing here.--Acer4666 (Talk) 12:31, July 24, 2017 (UTC) :::I've now put the icons above the edit button, e.g. at Jack Bauer. Please shout if any weird styling results from this change--Acer4666 (Talk) 12:01, August 4, 2017 (UTC)